Russia announced Friday the dispatch to the Mediterranean Sea of two frigates via the Bosphorus Strait, at a time when tensions are mounting in Syria between Moscow and Ankara, bereaved by the death of 33 soldiers.
The frigates Admiral Grigorovich and Admiral Makarov left Thursday their port of Sevastopol in the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, annexed in 2014 by Russia, and started Friday to cross the Bosphorus strait, said a spokesman for the Russian fleet of the sea Noire at the Interfax and Ria Novosti press agencies.
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The two frigates, equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles, "are making a planned crossing from Sevastopol to the high seas where they will join the permanent group of the Navy in the Mediterranean, " said spokesman Alexeï Roulev. He did not specify in which zone the ships go but the ships on this route generally support the Russian war effort in Syria. This mission comes a few hours after the death of 33 Turkish soldiers in the province of Idleb (northwest of Syria), affected by Syrian air strikes.
Russia, an ally of the Syrian regime, accused Turkish soldiers on Friday of having been among " combat units of terrorist groups ", assuring that they " should not have been there ". This incident further weakens the Russian-Turkish agreements concluded in recent years which were supposed to bring peace to Syria.
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As a Black Sea coastal state, Russia is bound by the 1936 Montreux Convention on the free movement of its warships in the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. According to its terms, Ankara has an obligation to let through Russian warships, unless Turkey is involved in a conflict or if it " considers itself threatened with imminent danger of war ".
The regular passage of Russian warships coming from or going to Syria - nicknamed " Tartous Express " or " Syrian Express " - always provokes a lot of curiosity in Istanbul, the ships having to pass through the strait in the very heart of the city.
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